FORTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES. 21 



frame where no brood was reared, and for j'ears you 

 could hold that frame up to the light and lookingf through 

 the comb see the writing that was on the paper. Then 

 when foundation came upon the market, what a boon 

 it was ! 



VISITS A. I. ROOT. 



In 1870 I made my first visit to Medina, then several 

 miles from a railroad station. Mr. Root was then a jew- 

 eler; his shop had been burned up, and his house (not a 

 large one at that time) was doing duty as both shop and 

 dwelling. Just then he was full of the idea of having 

 maple sap run directly from the trees to the hives. I 

 showed him how to use rotten wood for smoking bees, 

 and he thought it a great improvement over the plan he 

 had been using. I do not now remember what his plan 

 had been, but hardly a tobacco-pipe, for I have heard that 

 he has some objections to the use of tobacco. Pleased 

 with his newly acquired accomplishment, I had hardly 

 left town when he tried its use, and succeeded in setting 

 fire to a hive by means of the sawdust on the ground. 

 Whether it was burned up or merely put in jeopardy I 

 do not now remember. He did not send me the bill 

 for it. 



At that time he knew nothing of a bee-smoker, 

 and neither of us then thought that in the next third 

 of a century he would send out into the world three 

 hundred thousand of them ! 



ADOPTS 18x9 FRAME. 



In 1870 I made a change in hives. I cannot now tell 

 the size of frames I had been using, but I think the frames 

 were considerably deeper than the regular Langstroth. 

 I say "the regular Langstroth," for in reality all movable 

 frames are Langstroths, but the regular size is 1 75^x9 J^. 

 J. Vandervort, a man well known among the older bee- 



